Obama takes the blame but I did not see him taking a commercial flight

On my recent trip back from Toronto Canada on Saturday Jan 9th, security was increased but not to the extent that I thought it would be. First, they only allow you to have one bag brought on board a plane. That means that every woman was stuffing their purses into the handbags before walking into the security check area.

After the initial normal security check where your carry on goes through the X-ray machine while you go through the metal scanner, passengers going to the USA had to undergo a second screening process.

This involved separating the Men from the Woman, and all bags were searched again. You are asked to turn on your computer and cell phone. Then you are patted down by the same guys that was wearing the same uniform as the people at the front X-ray machines. All this is done while being supervised by a couple of RCMP officers in bullet proof vests and side arms. It was most interesting to see that even the elderly people on wheel chairs were patted down, and so were the children. After all, even in Canada, profiling is not allowed. Everyone is treated equally, including the terrorist.

There are several problems with what I have just describe. First of all, all this stuff does is punish the passengers for something that a stupid airport security worker in Amsterdam did by letting the terrorist on board the plane. Then our own government ( Obama took the blame) , Obama let our intelligence network lapse on intelligence.

They have really done nothing to make our flights safer. There is no ‘pat down’ in the world that can stop a terrorist that really wants to bring explosives on board. Especially if the patting down is done by the lowest paid security personnel and not by experts that actually know what they are feeling for. ( During the pat down I was waiting for the security officer performing the fine massage to ask me to cough ) . Especially in a country like Canada, where people are still walking around thinking that nothing like what happened to the flight going to Detroit where 300 people were almost killed by a terrorist that was allowed to board the plane, can happen in their country. As a matter of fact, the Detroit flight was over Canadian Airspace while the terrorist was trying to light the explosives!

Asking me or anyone else to turn on their computer means absolutely nothing since any computer can be made to ‘turn on’ while hiding anything else inside it. The same is for the cell phone. If they were serious, EVERY computer and cell phone would be checked for explosives. Remember, only 80 grams of a plastic explosive ( 3 ounces !!) could have taken the plane down.

There were no Body Scannering machines, dogs sniffing, or anything else that you would be there to make you think that they are really taking this whole security thing seriously. I really wonder if Canada is really listening to what is going on in this world. For that matter, how come Obama isn’t making sure that Canada, and the rest of the world is listening. Why not stop flights from flying into the United States from those countries that do not take appropriate action and have sub standard security? If we would have done that to the Netherlands, you would have seen how quickly Canada would have woken up, and made sure the security personnel were the top shelf variety instead of the losers they now have on the job. This had nothing to do with the fact that all of the security people were immigrants and had various degrees of knowledge in conversational English making it difficult to understand what questions they were asking you. That is not the point. They did not give me the impression that they were well trained and had the skill sets needed to stop a terrorist who is trained, and has methods of hiding and detonating explosive devices on the plane. That is the point.

I took Air Canada, and anyone that tells you that things have changed on the flight are totaling wrong. There was no mandatory ‘Sit down’ one hour before landing, and everyone was still allowed to use the washrooms up until 15 minutes before landing.

We need to hold the airlines responsible for the security of passengers that travel with them. There is no government worker landing the aircraft, or making sure the tires on the plan are filled with air. All of the USA airlines leave the security to the countries they depart from. They do this so if there is a disaster on board, they do not have any large responsibility of paying the victims. If they had their own security do the screening and checking baggage, they may have a large portion of the liability on their shoulders. I am not sure why one of the big airlines do not institute their own security system, like El Al, and advertise the fact that they have the safest planes. I don’t know about you, but I would be willing to pay extra for the ticket for such security. However, right now we are paying extra on our tickets to the government for Air Marshals that don’t exist and security that does not check each bag coming on to the plane.

The good news is, that according to Napolitano, the head of Homeland Security who has no previous experience in security, and has never served in our armed forces, if there is a disaster, Obama ( remember again, he took the blame) has the best clean up crew that our tax money can buy. Why we don’t have a General or Admiral in charge of security instead of a career politician is a discussion for another time.

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